Inorganic Chemistry, Vol.54, No.8, 4056-4063, 2015
Electronic Pseudogap-Driven Formation of New Double-Perovskite-like Borides within the Sc2Ir(6-x)T(x)B (T = Pd, Ni; x=0-6) Series
Analysis of the electronic density of states of the hypothetical ternary double-perovskite-like phases Sc2T6B (T = Ir, Pd, Ni) reveals the presence of deep and large pseudogaps between 61 and 68 valence electrons (VE) as well as a strong peak at 69 VEs. Subsequently, crystal orbital Hamilton population (COHP) bonding analysis shows that the heteroatomic T-B and Sc-T interactions are optimized in Sc2Ir6B (63 VE) but not in Sc2Pd6B (69 VE) and Sc2Ni6B (69 VE), thus indicating less stability for these VE-richer phases. These findings point out the possibility of discovering new double-perovskite-like borides through chemical substitution and lead to the study of the Sc2Ir6-xPdxB and Sc2Ir6-xNixB (x = 0-6; VE = 63-69) series, for which powder samples and single crystals were synthesized by arc melting the elements. Superstructure reflections were observed in the powder diffractograms of Sc2Ir6-xPdxB and Sc2Ir6-xNixB for x = 0-5 and VE = 63-68, thereby showing that these phases crystallize in the double-perovskite-like Ti2Rh6B-type structure (space group Fm (3) over barm, Z = 4). Single-crystal and Rietveld refinement results confirm and extend these findings because Pd (or Ni) is found to mix exclusively with Ir in all quaternary compositions. For x = 6, no superstructure reflections were observed, in accordance with the theoretical expectation for the 69 VE phases.